Buy it... if you are either a general Phil Collins enthusiast or a collector of animation, because Tarzan succeeds for both audiences.

Avoid it... if you expect to hear more than a token amount of Mark Mancina's strong score for the film, which is limited to 16 minutes on the Disney album.

Mancina

Tarzan: (Phil Collins/Mark Mancina) An endearing, all-around success story, Disney's 1999 summer animation blockbuster Tarzan returned to a formula that had worked wonders for 1994's The Lion King. The studio's adaptation of Edgar Rice Burroughs' tale was graced with outstanding visuals, a well-rounded cast, and a soundtrack that once again combined a member of the Media Ventures scoring machine with a well-known rock musician. The pairing of Elton John and Hans Zimmer for The Lion King may be more famous than that of Mark Mancina and former Genesis lead Phil Collins for Tarzan, though when it came time for both duos to tackle another animation film together, the latter two men arguably succeeded better in the end. The voice of Collins was still a mainstay in the late 1990's, with his distinctive tones mixed here in layers similar to those often heard in his famous Genesis and solo efforts. Because Collins wrote his own material for Tarzan, his five songs also sound very familiar to his career in terms of structure and instrumentation; only additional arrangements made by composer Mark Mancina to tie the songs to the score (and the film's overarching atmosphere) distinguish these efforts from Collins' larger body of work. Mancina's career had already taken flight by 1999, with several major blockbuster action scores under his belt. While the tone of his music often reminded of Zimmer, his former collaborator, he had begun to branch out significantly by the end of the decade. His score for the dramatic 1998 character tragedy Return to Paradise has the most influence on his music for Tarzan, exhibiting some of the same exotic instrumentation and, interestingly, an occasional reference to the former score's title theme. Mancina stated clearly at the time that he was very happy with his collaboration with Collins. Some of Collins' themes were integrated into the score and, conversely, as already mentioned, Mancina handled instrumental arrangements for Collins' main pieces.

The five songs by Collins all fit the film quite well, though some have aged better on album than others. The primary ballad of the film is "Two Worlds," a propulsive rock song that perhaps best carries over from Collins' solo works. Its numerous appearances in re-mixes and reprises on album (and in the film) serve to address the title character's ongoing identity issues. Perhaps by accident, the family song for Tarzan, "You'll Be in My Heart," stole the show. This lovely piece is the bond between young Tarzan and his adoptive mother of the wild (featuring a short contribution by Glenn Close), and its tender movements struck Golden Globe and Oscar gold. This song's win of those two awards came for it's only two nominations. The remaining songs aren't anywhere near as memorable, with the upbeat "Son of Man" adequately swinging through the trees with a growing Tarzan and the confident "Strangers Like Me" reflecting late in the film on the character's origins. The least interesting song remains "Trashin' the Camp," a shifty jazz piece complete with rowdy sound effects and ineffective vocal contributions by Rosie O'Donnell. The album for Tarzan is a seemingly endless stream of variations on these songs, usually adding to the film versions with the heavier percussion and bass of pop remixes. While the song "You'll Be in My Heart" lost the Grammy, the album as a whole did win one, proving that Disney succeeded in their aim. The original film version of "Two Worlds" is condensed into a shorted reprise that drops the significant Mancina arrangements, which probably makes it a better listening experience for Collins fans. While the pop version of "You'll Be in My Heart" turned out to be the main attraction, Collins' far more delicately restrained recording of the film version of that song remains superior. The recording of "Trashin' the Camp" that Collins made with the popular boy band N'Sync is obnoxious and unnecessary. No matter what your musical taste, the album's songs will require some parsing to find what suits you best.

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The straight score by Mancina amounted to about 40 minutes in length when heard in the film, though he is credited with co-writing some of the Collins songs due to his involvement in the instrumental arrangements that connect them with the surrounding score. The fluid movement between song and score in Tarzan is among the film's best attributes. Mancina does allow some of Collins' song foundations to enter into the score. The cue "One Family" on the commercial Disney album makes extensive use of the "You'll Be in My Heart" melody and throws in a token reference to "Two Worlds" near its end. Collins and Mancina combine their efforts fully for the "Two Worlds Finale" cue that offers the standardized merging of the pop elements and a choral crescendo (but with a great Tarzan call at the end). Mancina does write his own title theme for his score, largely representing the physical location in which Tarzan lives. This theme is heard extensively in the first two to three minutes of "A Wondrous Place," with an outstanding choral accompaniment to the theme at 1:10 into that cue (as the scene surveys a waterfall and the surrounding jungle). The medium-range jungle drums in this cue and others are joined by exotic flutes of all registers, a direct carry-over from Return to Paradise. References to the theme from that score late in "One Family" are an oddity in some ways, though the progression is simple enough to forgive the overlap. The action cue "The Gorillas" is a return to Mancina's more familiar Media Ventures associations. The sixteen minutes of score material on the Disney album is a solid listening experience, though the first and final cues, along with the "Two Worlds Finale," are easily more enduring in quality. Mancina was limited to that amount of material on the album because he had not yet mixed or recorded significant parts of the score by the time the album needed to be assembled. For die-hard fans, the composer eventually released the full 40 minutes on a 26-track, score-only promotional album. Overall, Tarzan offers a solid soundtrack and remains superior to Mancina and Collins' Brother Bear four years later.   Amazon.com Price Hunt: CD or Download

Score: ****
Songs: ****
Commercial Album: ***
Overall: ****

Bias Check:

For Mark Mancina reviews at Filmtracks, the average editorial rating is 3.1 (in 10 reviews) and the average viewer rating is 3.08 (in 7,086 votes). The maximum rating is 5 stars.